Assignment 2

The ELL student in the classroom that I observed speaks English fluently but came into the classroom with hardly any knowledge of the abcs. As she tried to reach the level of her peers in reading and writing, she struggled with decoding words. She didn't have a strong grasp of sight words. Because she tried to decode everything she read, her reading was slow and choppy so it was hard for her to understand what she was reading. Her teacher put a lot of effort into her progress and now, in the month of March, she is reading like a beginning first grader. Her teacher gave her a lot of one-on-one time and gave her a lot opportunities to practice sight words. Strategies that I observed the teacher using with the ELL that I would want to use in my own classroom are: giving the students opportunities to draw what they want to write about and then use the drawing as a springboard to write; peer tutoring; and sight word games.